“The truth of everything I say.”
“Prove it to whom?”
“Well, to myself, to begin with. That will be enough for me—to work for her. What it will prove,” Mrs. Assingham presently went on, “will be that she’s cured. That she accepts the situation.”
He paid this the tribute of a long pull at his pipe. “The situation of doing the one thing she can that will really seem to cover her tracks?”
His wife looked at him, the good dry man, as if now at last he was merely vulgar. “The one thing she can do that will really make new tracks altogether. The thing that, before any other, will be wise and right. The thing that will best give her her chance to be magnificent.”
He slowly emitted his smoke. “And best give you, by the same token, yours to be magnificent with her?”
“I shall be as magnificent, at least, as I can.”
Bob Assingham got up. “And you call ME immoral?”
She hesitated. “I’ll call you stupid if you prefer. But stupidity pushed to a certain point IS, you know, immorality. Just so what is morality but high intelligence?” This he was unable to tell her; which left her more definitely to conclude. “Besides, it’s all, at the worst, great fun.”
“Oh, if you simply put it at THAT—!”